Announcing my new chapbook!

As a novelist, I consider myself to be primarily a protégé of Calliope (the Muse of Epic Poetry), but sometimes her sister Euterpe (the Muse of Lyric Poetry) demands my attention. The First Hundred Years… is a collection of free-verse inspirational aphorisms illustrated by vibrant splashes of color, and is appropriate for adults and children.

If you had an opportunity to share a poem on April 26 (mine or anybody else’s), I’d like to hear about it (post your comment in Light a Fire Here, below). Most of my books (including both chapbooks) are available at Lulu Press at a 10-25% discount from list price.

As National Poetry Month draws to a close, I want to thank Robert Okaji for the poetic inspiration he has provided by posting his adaptations of classical Chinese poetry at his blog O at the Edges. Most of my concrete verse poems published in Heart, Head, Hand… were inspired by the transliterated Chinese poems that Robert frequently quotes at his blog. (You can download his free micro-chapbook of some adapted transliterations from the Chinese.) A widely published poet, Robert has been following my blog for four years, and I appreciate having his encouragement. 🙂

Life’s treating me about as well as can be expected. You and I are not in the same boat, but we’re sailing in the same fleet, so I don’t need to list in detail all the ways that autoimmune diseases can play hell with our plans. As far as the cancer goes, I have diagnostic testing scheduled for the end of this month, so I hope there will be reassuring news about the efficacy of all those extra gamma rays I got two years ago (the skin still hurts where it grew back after the radiation burns finally healed). And I’m figuring out how best to cope with the new critter that invaded my territory back in January: Darth CPAP. Read more about it at https://butterflybefree.wordpress.com/

I’ve got about a dozen blog domain names, but I don’t work on all of them all the time, and several are still in development, so they’re not public yet. Generally speaking, I sort my content between the active blogs according to the major focus of each post I write. There’s a very little bit of overlap, and sometimes I re-blog between different active domains, but not often. This divide-and-conquer approach helps me keep my blogging organized.